Harinam on Wheels: The Sacred Library Project in the Bay Area - By Panchali Devi

In a world that’s been pumping the brakes for nearly a year since the first major COVID-19 lockdowns, Srila Prabhupada’s book distributors have been shifting gears.  Going strong since April of 2020, the Sacred Library Project, once a small initiative local to Colorado Springs headed by Bhakta Hal, has grown far beyond, first nationwide and now worldwide.  Far west of the thriving front-range city, book distribution to Little Free Libraries has been flourishing in Silicon Valley, California, captained by Mukharavinda Dasa, a disciple of His Grace Vaisesika Prabhu, and Ananga Gopika Devi Dasi, a disciple of His Holiness Radhanath Swami Maharaja.

When lockdowns began hitting cities and towns nationwide, the couple began wondering how this would affect their opportunities for performing service, especially with a young child and a busy work life.  Feeling somewhat dry in their spiritual lives as restrictions and safety measures began rolling in, they felt it’d be impossible to do anything for an entire year, with a new baby and a growing pandemic.

At least, until the pair heard about the Sacred Library Project. 

The process is simple: Bhakta Hal, or another devotee, creates a map of your area, and then creates routes for you using RouteSavvy, an intuitive route planning software. After calculating an efficient route, the planner takes you on a devotional local road trip to nearby Little Free Libraries.  Begun in 2009, Little Free Library is a nonprofit organization that promotes neighborhood book borrowing by allowing community members to sponsor small, book-filled hutches that function under a “take a book, leave a book” idea. Devotees can swing by each library on their route, leaving a couple of devotional books, and borrowing a book or two of interest if the library is full.  With a goal of distributing books to fifty local libraries, the family set off. “Once we started, it was just contagious,” Ananga Gopika fondly recalls.

When asked if there was anything complicated or challenging about the process, Mukharavinda lightly jokes that “the only challenging part is that it’s very difficult to stop.”  And stop they haven’t.  “It’s a fun time together,” he continues.  As they often do, challenging times and creative solutions created an opportunity for togetherness even amidst so much separation. Weekday evenings became time for the family to set up a route for their next trip, looking forward to the next family drive with kirtan, conversation, and time with each other. Involving the whole family, Ananga Gopika and Mukharavinda make enthusiastic plans and organize their books, with their young daughter adding mantra cards and informational stickers to the books so that when each book arrives in its new home, any readers will have means to connect with local devotees.

Describing their routine, Ananga Gopika beams from across the screen: “The best part is driving with everyone together…. Service has to be a fun thing…it makes you feel happy.”  In this way, earnest drive, combined with technology used in Krishna’s service, leads to dynamic results.  “It adds enthusiasm,” says Ananga Gopika, speaking of the Route Savvy app.  “It’s a tool you can hand to other people.  You have everything ready, pray to Krishna, and get into your car! These books are going out, and they’ll end up in someone’s hands.” So with an app, a car, and cheerful hearts, the family would soon see that fifty libraries would only be the start of the road.

As the first fifty libraries were soon faded into the past, the couple saw that each neighborhood, city, and town they visited was different. San Francisco might be flush with libraries that need replenishing often, but that doesn’t mean the roads less traveled aren’t also worth exploring.  A quiet hiking path may lead to a secluded library where Mukharavinda would carefully place his books, knowing that someone would find them there.  In this empty scenic place some walker, perhaps there to be alone with nature, may also come to find one special book amongst all the others.  “I felt so happy,” he began recalling, “that there’s now even one book among all the others that shows what the meaning of life is.” These libraries are cared for by individuals or small communities; they won’t appear along the main drags of malls and downtown shopping lanes, where harinam parties often appear.  They’re mostly in less saturated areas and the folks sponsoring them want books and reading to be more accessible to their communities, and by placing a spiritual book in these places, it also ensures that books with timeless value and meaning are also made more accessible.

Sometimes an ordinary neighborhood can be the hardest place to reach.  In a way, each book placed in each little library purifies the area, creating small roadside shrines where tired pilgrims can rest their restless minds.  With Little Free Libraries, “you can give books to areas you can’t reach out to,” Ananga Gopika notes. “In really rich neighborhoods, you can’t access these people—but this way you can.”  Mukharavinda adds, “these big homes can be like big jails.” During times of self-isolation especially, even a home or a neighborhood becomes a place you’re limited to.  So, as with any other form of harinam, the devotees go to the people when the people cannot come to them.  That act now can be as simple as leaving a book for someone to find on their walk, on their way home.  Each book is a seed, and even if the wind carries it somewhere other than where it was first planted, it will eventually grow. 

Sometime in the future, the pair hopes to open a Little Free Library of their own, to care for a spot that can always have a Gita or two waiting.  Such a future library would be a legacy to leave behind in their own community, that would stay with the house or the neighborhood even if they left.  Despite the pandemic, Mukharavinda and Ananga Gopika have done more than adapt to changing circumstances; they’ve flourished under them.

And this is what devotees do.  Across any time and any circumstance, with the tools at hand, despite any hardship or change, they remain steady.  We’re a community—and like so many other close communities we’ve missed time with each other.  Time spent on street harinam, time in bustling kitchens with the Sunday lecture playing from the upstairs on old speakers, feasts and festivals, late-night clean-ups, and trains of devotees hauling harmoniums and books, snacks and picnic blankets from temple to campus to park then to crowded mall, in and out of little vans with Jagannatha stickers on the dashboard.  There’s so much of this that we as a community have missed.

And yet, sitting in front on my laptop in Colorado, with Mukharavinda Dasa and Ananga Gopika Devi Dasi across from me, in front of their own screen in their own home, I didn’t feel disconnected from them.  There’s a togetherness in perseverance—in knowing that even while missing so much, Paramatma, nestled in each of our hearts, connects us together.  “To make the world Krishna conscious seems to be the most inconceivably difficult and impossible thing that one could ever attempt to do,” says Sankarshan Dasa Adhikari in his December 20, 2020 “Thoughts for the Day.”  He continues, “But when we remember that every living being in all of existence is factually, constitutionally, a pure devotee of Krishna who has simply forgotten it, we can understand that such spiritual awakening is not really as hard as it seems.  All we really have to do is facilitate everyone’s remembrance of who they actually are.”  In September of 2020, Mukharavinda Dasa and Ananga Gopika Devi Dasi began with a goal of distributing books to fifty local libraries, and by February of 2021 their family had reached over five hundred, distributing well over 1,000 books and becoming one of the most prolific teams of the entire Sacred Library Project during the pandemic.

When asked what they would tell a devotee who was wondering if distributing books to Little Free Libraries was for them, the couple’s response was unanimous, and immediate: “Go for it!” said Mukharavinda, and Ananga Gopika affirmed—“You will love it.”

The Sacred Library Project continues, and even as restrictions lift and the world begins tilting back towards the familiar and we all look forward to reconnecting within our communities, there’s always room for this special kind of service.  As the pair affirmed, there are neighborhoods and communities out there, quiet spots and unassuming street corners, even a farm lane or nature trek where souls pass their days.  There may not always be a sankirtana party in these spots, but there are libraries—cared for and maintained by their communities, just waiting for a little sacred seed to be planted inside. Harinam on wheels can drive on even after we can all be together again, which is great news, because it’s all the more fun with friends. So, again, “Go for it, you will love it!”

For more information about the Sacred Library Project or to get started distributing in your area, please contact RadhaKrishnaCOS@gmail.com.

An immense thank you is due to Mukharavinda Dasa and Ananga Gopika Devi Dasi for their time and sweet service.  All my obeisances to them and to all the devotees in our global community who continue this project, and all other harinam initiatives even in the strangest times and most unfamiliar circumstances. My obeisances to you many times over.

 

Hare Krishna